Episode 10 brings on Glenn Schneider, band director at Metea Valley High School in suburban Chicago and a long-time online instructor for VanderCook College’s MECA graduate program. Glenn was teaching music online years before COVID was a household word — and he walks through exactly how he’s rebuilding the feedback loop, the goal-setting day, and the “create something” assignment that’s keeping his fully-virtual band engaged.
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Inside this episode
The 10th episode opens with George Quinlan Jr.’s update from the dealer side: the tide is shifting, more teachers are starting beginners. Steve confirms the same picture inside EEi — the platform is seeing “easily the best usage in the history of the website,” and the EEi teacher Facebook group has become the fastest path from teacher question to working answer. Tim quotes the great Dick Clardy of Texas — “you have to have 27 different ways to teach every concept” — and Steve says he now needs 27 different ways to answer the same EEi support question, which is fine by him.
Then the main event: Glenn Schneider. Glenn has been writing and teaching online courses for VanderCook College’s MECA graduate program for five or six years, so when Metea Valley went fully virtual he was unusually well prepared — and unusually honest about how different a 50-student Zoom rehearsal is from anything that came before. His core diagnosis: teachers are stuck and demoralized when the feedback loop disappears. The fix is to redesign for it: schedule a goal-setting day at the start of the week (his district mandated it for all teachers), use breakout rooms aggressively so students discuss in pairs and small groups, work individually with students on-camera while the rest of the section listens and learns, and design assignments that create something — even four measures of chorale composition.
The biggest moment of the episode is Glenn’s story about a one-paragraph composition exercise: a student sent him a personal email saying it had been fun, and that single note energized him for the next week of teaching. Steve picks it up and tells EEi teachers: when students submit recordings, the comment box is the same kind of one-to-one channel — read every one, look for the one little gem you’d miss reading too fast. Glenn closes on the line the rest of the episode will quote: be Mr. or Miss So-and-So, be the same person you were in the classroom, just with a microphone and a computer. Don’t copy other people’s programs. The older teachers in the music education community love helping the younger ones — reach out, ask, talk to each other.
Read the full transcript
(Note: machine transcript looped briefly from 16:20 to 19:46 with a stretch of repeated “point that we want to get to / Thank you for joining us” filler, and again very briefly around 55:53 — substantive conversation resumes immediately on the other side of each gap.)
Welcome to episode 10
[00:00:00] Welcome to Essential Elements Band Talk with Dr. Tim Lautzenheiser, Paul Lavender, and host Dr. Charlie Menghini. Made possible through Hal Leonard — publisher of EE for Band, EE for Orchestra, and the new EE Music Class Interactive.
[00:01:32] Charlie: welcome to our 10th episode. Tonight’s guest is Glenn Schneider — band director at Metea Valley High School, “a double sharp guy who has really been involved in online learning way before COVID-19 was a household word.” Charlie has known Glenn for 18 years.
Quinlan’s update & the toll of hybrid schedules
[00:03:40] Charlie checked in with George Quinlan Jr. of Quinlan and Fabish (the guest on Episode 2): the tide is shifting, more teachers are seriously preparing to start beginners. Quinlan, unsolicited, mentioned that the EEi instrument-startup videos are one of the big helpers directors are leaning on.
[00:05:24] Charlie also spoke with a hybrid-schedule teacher — students two days face-to-face, but expected to teach virtually at the same time. “She’s actually being two different teachers,” Tim says. “You can only keep it in passing gear for so long before the engine starts to rattle.”
Steve Smith on the EEi numbers and the “please don’t be sorry to bug us” rule
[00:06:34] Steve: EEi usage right now is “easily the best in the history of the website.” The EEi teacher Facebook group is a real-time feedback loop — teachers solving each other’s problems.
[00:10:00] A plea from Steve: teachers email saying “sorry to bug you” — don’t. Some teachers Steve has gone back-and-forth with 10–15 times. Even all-caps panicky emails are welcome. “We’re here for you. As much as we can be.”
[00:11:47] Charlie: Steve has transferred himself from those days of getting excited when a beginner plays their first note to getting excited when a beginning teacher posts their first video.
[00:12:01] Steve cites Texas icon Dick Clardy — “you have to have 27 different ways to teach every concept.” Steve now feels he needs 27 different ways to answer the same EEi question, and he’s fine with that.
What’s in EEi that teachers don’t know is there
[00:12:51] Steve: the most common comment is “I didn’t know how much was in there.” Music-theory curriculums, rhythm-counting curriculums for every concept in Book 1 (Book 2 coming). Search the Resources section by instrument — type “horn” and everything on horn surfaces, including Chris Meredith’s beginner-horn video (Meredith took his group to Midwest a couple years ago).
[00:15:53] Steve trails an upcoming feature: the video-submission tool is in development, targeting first couple weeks of October.
Meet Glenn Schneider — Metea Valley HS, VanderCook MECA, Wheaton College
[00:19:46] Glenn’s background: he received his master’s from Concordia, then jumped in as VanderCook College started developing online courses. He wrote practical music-teacher courses on retention, recruitment, and program development — they took off. He writes a new class each year for VanderCook’s MECA graduate elective program and has now been with them five or six years.
[00:21:07] Metea Valley is fully online; all the district’s schools are. Wheaton College, where Glenn also teaches, is back in person — he’s getting a mix of both.
How EEi fits in a 27,000-student district
[00:22:00] Glenn’s district has 27–28,000 students, multiple middle schools, three large high schools. His beginning-teacher friends use EEi heavily, in conjunction with NoteFlight, Soundtrap and Google Classroom (and Zoom). What his colleagues love most about EEi: the professional sounds. “You only get one chance to introduce the idea of trumpet tone and clarinet tone. The fact that you guys have gone to the trouble to make those professional recordings is fantastic because that’s what they’ve got in their ear now going forward.”
The biggest problem with online band: the feedback loop is gone
[00:24:46] Tim asks how Glenn is holding up. Glenn: as much grad-school online experience as I have, it doesn’t get you ready for 50 students zooming in from your high-school band. The hardest part: feedback. “Good teachers know that whatever you put out, you’re going to get back. Well, that’s not happening necessarily in the online classroom, naturally. But it is possible to get it — you just have to rewrite the script.”
[00:26:18] The story: Glenn had his wind symphony students adjust notes in a chorale and record their part. A student emailed personally afterward: “Mr. Schneider, that was a really fun activity. We should do more of that.” “Even just that little bit of personal feedback energized me for the next week of teaching.”
Glenn’s online toolkit: goal-setting Mondays, breakout rooms, individual back-and-forth
[00:30:00] The district mandated Monday as goal-setting day for every teacher at every level. “Take 15 minutes, maybe less for younger kids, but lay out the week for them. If you just try to go 100 miles an hour, it doesn’t work.”
[00:30:35] Breakout rooms: do something with the main group, send them to breakout rooms, bring them right back, send them off again. Same shift that’s been happening in face-to-face rehearsal — stop playing, turn to your partner, talk about the fingerings.
[00:31:34] Individual instead of mass instruction: in a 50-student Zoom, Glenn does back-and-forth with individual students rather than talking at all 50 for half an hour. “Other kids learn from hearing them play and me providing feedback.”
Steve on the EEi comment box as the same kind of one-to-one channel
[00:35:47] Steve picks up the personal-connection thread: when EEi students submit assignments, there’s always a comment box. Encourage students to write something specific — about the piece, about the dog dropping a bone at their foot mid-recording. “Out of 50 recordings, one little gem you’d miss reading too fast. Or a question. Or ‘I don’t understand how to finger F#.’ That’s the opportunity to get to that individual.”
Portfolios, reflections, and the one-room schoolhouse
[00:34:42] Glenn: design ways for students to be proud of themselves. He has students build a portfolio — thoughts on arts advocacy, where they started, where they’re going, pictures of them playing, audio examples young-to-old. A huge piece of student-autonomy. Plus one-sentence bell-ringers and one-paragraph reflections, with Glenn sharing his favorite next class. “That lets them know I’m reading it, I’m listening to them, they all have a valuable voice.”
[00:37:02] Tim invokes the one-room schoolhouse — students taught other students. Glenn ties it to Suzuki: the three-year-old’s first performance is just walking onto stage and taking a bow. “It’s letting the older kids encourage the younger kids and letting them be proud of the baby steps. That kid playing a B-flat scale is making all-state band three years later playing three-octave major scales.”
Glenn’s one takeaway: create something
[00:46:49] Tim asks for the magic-pill takeaway. Glenn: create something. But be careful — students will think they have to be as good as the best one in class. So give them tiered options: part A is great if that’s all you can do; part 1 + part 2 if you can manage; if you can already play it perfectly, embellish it. Melody project, chorale project, full-band project. “It doesn’t matter if it’s four measures or four minutes long — you and your students created something together.”
The random Zoom moment: the apartment roof and 30 minutes of deafening hammering
[00:48:50] Steve asks for the most random Zoom moment. Glenn: the apartment complex where he’s living temporarily (building a house) decided today was a good day to replace the roof — roofers were 10 feet from his head 15 minutes before class started. “Can you all hear the pounding on my roof?” All heads nodded.
[00:49:55] Charlie: “Is it like a bad percussion sectional, Glenn?” Glenn: “Oh, the worst.” Tim: “Or a good percussion sectional.” Glenn: “It’s excellent.”
Use the time you wish you had: CSO concerts, guest cellists, Metallica on electric cello
[00:51:08] Glenn: 90% of band-director time is notes and rhythms. The rest is fundraiser and tuxedo announcements. This is an opportunity to shift to the things the “they’ve-got-it-all-going-on” teachers were doing — videos, professional musician shares, CSO concerts. Paul tells the story of his son’s summer orchestra: principal cello of the Milwaukee Symphony zoomed in (“sure, I got nothing else going on”), played Metallica on electric cello, kids loved it.
Communication is the arsenal
[00:53:01] Tim’s soft pitch: how important is communication? Glenn: “Everything. It’s your arsenal. It’s who you are to everyone in your music community. Positive communication — words that promote music instead of busying it up and making it sound like a task.” Remember: music is most likely the favorite class of their day. They’re still whistling the tunes and clapping the parts on the way to lunch — still doing it in e-learning, sitting through math going “oh man, two more to go until I get to band.”
Final thoughts: be Mr. or Miss So-and-So
[00:54:41] Glenn’s sign-off: be positive, your attitude is contagious. Don’t copy other people’s programs. Be Mr. or Miss So-and-So, be the same person you were in the classroom, just with a microphone and a computer. Older teachers in the music education community love helping younger teachers — sign up for a class, write an email, even write a composer. “That’s what we do in the music education community.”
Signing off
[00:55:48] Charlie thanks Glenn. Tim: “Look what’s happening. God bless he’s so good — just so good.” Paul: “He’s the man with the plan.” Charlie on the show’s secret: Tim’s right, the trick is to keep getting guests who are better than us. Steve Smith’s not a very common name, by the way. Stay positive, stay communicating — see you next week.
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